


Don't Panic

by ProfessorSpork



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Genre: Crack, Crossover, F/M, Humor, Mash-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-02
Updated: 2010-07-02
Packaged: 2019-08-24 00:36:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16629512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorSpork/pseuds/ProfessorSpork
Summary: As our story begins, Rose Tyler is no more aware of her frankly magnificent destiny than a tea leaf is aware of the history of the East India Company. She never could get the hang of Thursdays.[A Doctor Who/Hitchhiker's Guide mash-up]





	Don't Panic

**Author's Note:**

> Because the best way to honor Douglas Adams is to steal from him shamelessly.
> 
> **WINNER** 2nd place for Challenge 40 over at @then_theres_us on livejournal; originally posted July 2, 2010.

Deep in the uncharted backwaters of the less fashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy, there lies an unremarkable yellow sun.

Orbiting said sun at a distance of roughly 92 million miles is an equally unremarkable blue-and-green planet, whose ape-descended life forms are far more interested in watching football on the telly and eating beans on toast than in discovering what else is out there. Most of the inhabitants are as utterly unremarkable as the planet they live on and sun they orbit, but a few—a fair few, depending on whose counting—are actually quite extraordinary.

One of them is named Rose Tyler.

As our story begins, Rose Tyler is no more aware of her frankly magnificent destiny than a tea leaf is aware of the history of the East India Company. She eats and she sleeps; most days she works as a shop girl at Henrik’s, and most nights she watches soaps with her mum. For the first nineteen years of her life, nothing happened.

This is not a story about those first nineteen years.

* * *

“Come off it, Rose, you’ll never get away with this,” said Shareen, laughing as she watched her friend dress a mannequin. “Mr. Prosser’ll have your head.”

“What Mr. Prosser doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” Rose shrugged, “and besides, if I followed his instructions no one would ever step into the store.”

“Rose…”

“I mean, honestly, how that man got his job I’ll never know. It’s a miracle we have any customers at all, with everyone but me so scared to stand up to him.”

“Rose…!”

“I’d lodge a formal complaint if I could, but there’s about a million miles of red tape to get through and he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he.”

“Ahem,” said Mr. Prosser.

Rose swallowed.

“Miss Tyler,” he said slowly, trying to keep the irritation from his voice, “do you have any idea how much trouble it would be for me to fire you, then find and train a replacement?”

She blinked, trying to look innocent. “How much?”

He leered at her. “None at all.”

By a strange coincidence, _none at all_ was precisely how much suspicion Rose Tyler had that one of her closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a large planet somewhere in the vicinity of the constellation Kasterborous. Rose Tyler’s failure to suspect this merely reflects the care with which her friend blended himself into human society, after a fairly shaky start. When he’d first arrived several years ago, the minimal research he’d done had indicated that the name “the Doctor” would be nicely inconspicuous.

Rose was also under the impression that he’d be out of town for several days on business (of what sort, she was never entirely sure) and was therefore thoroughly surprised when he walked right into her as she folded jumpers in the Petites section.

“Hello!” he said cheerfully, before immediately dropping his expression into something much more urgent. “Are you busy?”

She gestured broadly at the display of jumpers, waving one around in her hand. “A bit, yeah.”

“There’s a pub down the road. Let me buy you some chips; we need to talk.”

“Doctor, Mr. Prosser’s been looking for reasons to sack me all week!”

“Well, he can do that whilst you’re away, can’t he?”

“But I don’t want him to!”

“In a half an hour it won’t matter anyway. Give me twelve minutes. Please.”

“Doctor…”

“Rose! You’ve got to listen to me; I’m not fooling. I’ve got to tell you the most important thing you’ve ever heard, I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve got to tell you in the pub down the road.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to need a very stiff drink. D’you trust me?”

“Of course, but—”

“Then _run_ ,” he said, and grabbed her hand.

* * *

“Now will you tell me what the hell’s going on?” she asked as he settled into the booth next to her, arms overflowing with tankards and orders of chips.

“Drink up,” he said, shoving a glass in her hand, “you’ve got three pints to get through.”

She laughed. “What, at lunchtime?”

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

“But—”

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect—but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff. So to section off a bit of it for tea every afternoon seems a bit silly, don’t you think?”

“Doctor, you’re not makin’ any sense.”

“And eat your chips, you’ll need the salt.”

She sighed and stuck one in her mouth, resigned to playing along for him. “Why three pints?”

“Muscle relaxant.”

“Muscle—Doctor, _what aren’t you telling me?_ ”

He took a nervous sip of his beer, then stared at her seriously. “How would you react if I told you that I’m not from Manchester after all, but from a planet called Gallifrey about 250 million light years away from Earth?”

“I… dunno. Is that the sort of thing you feel you’re likely to say?”

“Eat up,” he mumbled, pushing her chips towards her. “The world’s about to end.”

She took a moment to study his face—the fire behind his blue eyes, the lines at his mouth and forehead. “You’re not joking.”

“No, I’m not.”

“But—why’s it you sound like you’re from the North?”

“Lots of planets have a north!” he protested, in that endearingly offended way he had. “Look—” he said, reaching over the table to grab her hand, “we’re fallin’ through space, you and me. The ground beneath our feet is spinnin’ at 1,000 miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it.”

“The turn of the Earth?”

“And it won’t be turning much longer.”

“This must be Thursday,” Rose realized. “I could never get the hang of Thursdays.”

“Rose—”

“Right. No, sure. Planet called Gallifrey. World ending. Um… why’s the world ending, exactly?”

“There’s a Vogon Constructor Fleet poised over your atmosphere, ready to demolish the planet at any moment.”

“A what?”

“A Vogon Constructor Fleet.”

“That supposed to sound impressive?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“So if the world’s about to end, why am I sitting here eatin’ chips?”

“Because we’re gonna hitch a lift,” he said, standing up.

“What, like stick our thumbs out and hope for the best?”

He pulled her to her feet. “Something like that.”

“But… aren’t we going to stop them?”

He looked at her as though he’d never seen anything quite so remarkable in his life. “Rose Tyler. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“’Course I am! Can’t just let them destroy the Earth, can we?”

“Fan _tas_ tic,” he laughed, then a gave her a dangerous sort of smile that did inappropriate—but not exactly uncomfortable—things to her insides. “I’ve just got one question to ask before we go.”

“Yeah?” she asked, trying not to sound as breathless as she felt, already caught up in the storm of his energy.

He entwined their fingers. “Do you know where your towel is?”


End file.
